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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25726789">intimate with brokenness</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dewshi/pseuds/dewshi'>dewshi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Bittersweet, Imminent Oblivion, M/M, Meteorstuck, Sadstuck, idk what to tag this it's sad and soft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:02:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,823</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25726789</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dewshi/pseuds/dewshi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone else on the meteor is gone. Dave and Karkat are alone with each other and their feelings. Soon enough, the doomed timeline is going to collapse. In the meantime...<br/></p>
<p></p><div>
  <p>
    <br/>
    <i>Slow down, start again from the beginning</i>
    <br/>
    <i>I can't keep my head from spinning out of control</i>
    <br/>
    <i>Is this what being vulnerable feels like?</i>
    <br/>
  </p>
</div>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>intimate with brokenness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>yeah, no clue how to tag this. i don't write sad shit a lot. enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Shit!"</p>
<p>You jerk you into awareness. Fear and panic are still running on the forefront of your mind. Images of blood and gore in hues of green, teal, purple and red are plastered onto your consciousness. Slowly, you sober, and they become replaced with the dull gray of the darkness.</p>
<p>You're not in your cot. For someone else, that might be an alarming thing to wake to, but not for you. Not anymore. You've been sleeping on the floor for the last however long it’s been. Not that you've been sleeping much at all, especially since… you know.</p>
<p>You're in some random hallway. You probably passed out walking through here. You have no clue where you were going anymore. It doesn't really matter. Most things have stopped mattering, even if it still feels like they matter a lot. You haul yourself up and lean your back against the wall, relaxing into the cold metal. Something still feels safe about having your back to the wall, even though nothing on this meteor can hurt you anymore.</p>
<p>Unless, of course, Dave goes crazy and kills you. He might. It's not a totally unrealistic idea, given how your previous friendships have gone. Maybe being faced with the infinite void of nothingness almost completely alone and witnessing a massacre is enough to finally make him lose his marbles. It’s possible that any moment now, he's going to come and find you with a sword in hand to finally let you out of your misery.</p>
<p>...No. He wouldn't. He's too much of a wuss to kill you. Sure, he killed Gamzee - as much as Gamzee could be killed - but still. He hasn't exactly been himself since that night. Neither have you. </p>
<p>You let yourself think for just a few seconds about who you both used to be. Just long enough to remember that shy smile you once caught on his face, when it was dark and the only light in the common room was the warm yellow of the lamp on the table. You remember the way he eclipsed it,  the way it looked like he was glowing.</p>
<p>You pull yourself up onto weak feet. Wonder where you were going before you collapsed. You hadn't slept for days on end before this. You don't think you knew what you were doing. Not that there's a lot to do in a place like this. Not anymore. </p>
<p>Maybe you could go to the nutritionblock and get something to eat. It’s close enough that it might have been where you were headed. Sure. Food's important in this situation, where any moment now, you're going to vanish forever and fade into nothing. Where you're functionally not real anymore, and you're just waiting for Paradox Space to dust its shelves and toss you in the waste receptacle.</p>
<p>Fuck. It keeps hitting you, again and again, that your friends are gone. Kanaya, Terezi, Rose, even Gamzee. He was your friend once, that stupid blitzed-out moron high on his stupid pies. Now he’s long gone, replaced by the memory of a murderous clown who fucked up everything in your life and then just vanished without a trace. Fucker didn’t even have the common courtesy to actually properly die like everyone else did. </p>
<p>Why couldn’t you have died instead? Maybe if you were gone in their place, even if the timeline was doomed, your friends could be happy.</p>
<p>No, what are you thinking? If you were dead, your friends would be stuck in your situation now, stranded alone in the middle of the same uncaring emptiness.</p>
<p>Maybe they would miss you, probably not, but regardless, they’d be stuck here. They would know, as you do now, that they had two options: to off themselves, or to evaporate into the mists between timelines. Maybe they’d be driven even more insane than you. </p>
<p>Honestly, even if you died normally, you’d never be able to find any of your friends in the dreambubbles. Not the ones from your own timeline, anyway. You just hope they’re happy without you.</p>
<p>Without you, and without Dave, too, you guess.</p>
<p>You drag your feet across clanging metal. A part of you panics every time your shoes hit the floor. You’ve trained yourself to associate making noise with danger. Someone will hear you and come to kill you if you aren’t totally silent. It could be a mindless drone tasked with killing you, or a bloodthirsty boy who you once thought you really loved. But now there’s nobody left to hear you. Nobody that actually matters, at least.</p>
<p>The kitchen is empty, as it usually is nowadays. You might be more alarmed if it wasn’t. </p>
<p>You briefly wonder where Dave is. You haven’t seen much of him since that night. Little enough that you sometimes forget you’re not actually completely alone, in some sense of the word. He might’ve dragged himself to a desolate corner of this ill-begotten rock and died like a stray purrbeast. You guess that would make him get to be with the people he loved again.</p>
<p>Blegh.</p>
<p>The “coffee” machine whirrs with a disgusting wet clank and pours a few thick globs of black liquid into a cup. You almost gag at it. For all the humans’ talk of how gross they think you trolls are, if this is what they were dealing with back on Earth, they really ought to take a look in the vanity reflector. </p>
<p>You bring it to your lips. Lukewarm and bitter. Just like the air around you. There’s a sense of mustiness, like you’re in a place that’s been forgotten by time. That’s certainly how it feels.</p>
<p>The nearest transportalizer fizzes behind you, jerking you into awareness more than any human coffee could. You turn on your heels to find red fabric moving in through the door. Dave’s eyes are on the ground, but they flick up to you. </p>
<p>Evidently, he wasn’t expecting to see you either. He stumbles backwards and hovers just far enough above ground for it to be noticeable. Though, as soon as he realizes it’s you, he lands and regains his composure. He even clears his throat. “Hey, dude. Didn’t expect you to be here.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have been if I’d known you would be,” you respond acidically. You slam the cup on the counter. In truth, part of you is glad to see him. You haven’t spoken to anyone in so long. You were starting to think you’d forgotten how to form words. Or maybe you were just going insane from the solitude. You look up. Dave is still standing there, staring at you through those big, unreadable dark lenses. Unreadable. Fucker. “Well, did you have some business to attend to or did you come here specifically to torment me?”</p>
<p>“Well, I was gonna get some food, but to be honest - not to rag on your goblin face, but - I think I’ve lost my appetite,” Dave says flatly, leaning against the wall. Oh, he’s actually snarking back. That’s rare. </p>
<p>Usually - before… well, when the girls were still around, he would insult your anger, not your person. He would make fun of your untamable temper or point out flaws in your arguments instead of going for the same ad hominem arguments you default to. That was always one of his few admirable traits. </p>
<p>You scoff and start to walk past him. When you’re about to pass him, he grabs onto your arm. His hand is warmer than you thought a living being could be. “Wait.”</p>
<p>You tear yourself from his grip and slam into the other side of the doorframe. Dave winces as you curse from the pain of the impact. You grumble when you regain your footing. “Alright, great job, thank you so much, jackass. What the fuck do you want?”</p>
<p>“Damn, you’re really that eager to get rid of me? Man, I know I told you you’re ugly just now, but I thought that bros of a feather were supposed to stick together in trying times like these,” Dave says a little bit too quickly to be cool. His voice cracks on the final ‘these.” He himself seems to consciously refuse to recognize this. You exhale through your nose, kind of a sigh, though not quite. You can’t stand the way your head is telling you to humor this idiot.</p>
<p>You’ve been alone for a long time.</p>
<p>“Fine,” you concede. There’s a moment of brief silence. Then, “did you expect us to just stand here, or…?”</p>
<p>As it turns out, no, he didn’t. Dave, apparently, has been constructing himself a “pad” - that’s what he calls it - on the main landing platform on the meteor’s roof. </p>
<p>He takes you there, a place where the dreambubbles sparkle up above, where urntables and comic books and worn-out pillows are scattered across the concrete of the floor, and the astral winds of Paradox Space blow cold enough to make blankets a necessity. Really, what it is is a haphazard pile of crap made by one boy with too much spare time.</p>
<p>“Don’t you like the man cave?” Dave asks upon seeing your expression. He’s got a turntable in his lap, radiating a soft, electric buzz you can only hear in the lowest of sound waves. </p>
<p>You, in turn, are sitting on a couch piece pillaged from the common room with a quilt on your lap. You’re frowning up at the sky. It’s horrid, the way it stares down at you. Like it’s some all-encompassing thing. It makes you feel small in a way you despise to your core.</p>
<p>“Couldn’t you have made this shithole indoors where the void isn’t constantly hanging over the head like a wiggler mobile, fuckwit?” you ask, sinking deeper into the pillows of the couch. And a bit closer to Dave. Who can blame you? It’s cold up here, and Dave is a human. Humans are warm.</p>
<p>“For real? That’s your take? I really like it. I mean, I get to look at all the dream bubbles all the way up there. It’s like, all my dead friends and my dead selves and everyone is up there, just, y’know, hanging out. And here I am, just this little dude, gettin’ to see the whole ass cosmic multiverse. It’s mighty humbling, you know? It’s like some great inspiration for my sick beats,” Dave explains. His voice is full of fake confidence. </p>
<p>He twists one of the nubs on the turntable. A sharp shriek emerges from the machine. You both wince and he hurries to turn the nub back down. The sigh he lets out is almost inaudible, as is the hint of resignation in his voice. </p>
<p>“...So I don’t really know why I haven’t been inspired at all.”</p>
<p>You look up at the sky again. Well, the closest thing to a sky that exists anymore. The closest thing to a sky you’ll ever see. Hundreds, probably thousands of distant dots spot it like the freckles on Dave’s face. Shinier, though, than Dave’s face, you’ll concede. You wonder if you could count them. It would take you the rest of your life. That might not be much of a high bar to cross, anymore.</p>
<p>In each bubble, you imagine hundreds of Terezis laughing with sharp grins and hundreds of Kanayas reading books about rainbow drinkers like herself and hundreds of Solluxes and Nepetas and Tavroses. And with them, hundreds of Karkats who do just as well being you as you ever have.</p>
<p>You can’t cry now. Not in front of cape asshole. Not here, please, not now. Your bulbs sting and you squeeze them closed and shake your head, trying to get the heat out of your face. If you cry here, you’ll die. Forget vanishing into the ether, you’ll just fling yourself off the meteor and hope that you land in the soft tentacles of a horrorterror. Dave’s voice breaks through your thoughts. His hand lands on your shoulder. “Hey, Karkat. You good? You having some sorta episode?”</p>
<p>“Shut the fuck up, you stone-faced prick,” you snap and shove him away. There’s a pause, and the shuffling of fabric as Dave’s hand recedes. You ruck up your knees and bury your face in your arms and the rough wool of the quilt. You’re still really, really tired. You wish you could… disappear. You realize that’s exactly what you’re waiting to happen anyway. If only you could make it happen faster.</p>
<p>There’s silence. For a long, long time, nothing but silence and the ambience of the world. It’s long enough that it sinks through your skin and into your head. In the darkness of the woven material your face is tucked into, it does almost start to feel like the world has disappeared. It starts to lull you into a dizzy half-awareness. </p>
<p>Then, there’s the gentle sound of a thrumming beat and a low chord.</p>
<p>It’s low enough that you don’t register when the music first begins. But at some point, you realize that it’s there, harmonizing with the idle buzz of the turntable.</p>
<p>It starts off with nothing but an ethereal-sounding rhythm and bassline. Then a voice joins in. Tenor and soft. It’s like velvet, a cool drink on a sweltering day. Water on the pads of your fingers after perigees of nothing but acid flowing from the tap of your wash pool. Sweet, like the sugar sand on Nepeta’s planet. Maybe it’s your sleep-addled pan, but it’s a welcome sound.</p>
<p>Slowly, you realize that there’s only one person here whose voice that could be.</p>
<p>Your ears twitch and strain to listen closer to the melody. It’s gentler than any other music you’ve heard him make. The long, wistful notes are a far cry from the loud and violent beats of his other songs. He’s making mumbled, jarbled words and uncertain syllables that blend together. They aren’t at all like his sharp slam poetry couplets. They’re mellow and gentle and bittersweet.</p>
<p>...Okay, what? Stop listening to him, stop thinking about how much you like his singing. Stop it, stop, stop, stop. You shake your head and emerge out of your huddle. Dave startles and his humming stilts to an abrupt pause. “Hey, fuck, I forgot you were here.”</p>
<p>That kinda stings.</p>
<p>“Wow, really? I sure feel appreciated,” you snarl, sitting up and leaning away. “You’re so fucking perceptive.”</p>
<p>“Well, I mean, yeah, but,” Dave says, “I just mean I do weird shit when I'm alone, I guess. Like, uncool shit? Well, no. I don’t know. Sorry. I’m tired."</p>
<p>“Oh, no, you’re making just as much sense as usual. From experience, I can tell that words clearly do not mean the same things to you that they mean to everybody else in the world,” you say. “Maybe everything you say meant something comprehensible in that magic language that you shared with Rose, but guess what, dumbfuck? She’s dead! Everybody’s dead except for us! So why do you still cling on to the fantasy that ‘cool¨’ means nothing but ‘a moron in a silly costume?’ Who are you trying to impress? Me? It’s not going to fucking work!”</p>
<p>You regret every word before it even comes out. Dave stares at you blankly. He turns away from you. “Okay. Whatever then, I guess.”</p>
<p>Hah! Great job stepping over the obvious line again. The one topic of conversation you should not have mentioned is his fucking human sister’s death and you brought it up anyway. Now he doesn’t want to talk to you anymore. And why would he? You’re a piece of shit failure of a living being and you don’t deserve anybody’s attention anyway. Especially not anymore, after what you allowed to happen.</p>
<p>“I’m… fucking sorry,” you say and immediately want to smack yourself. “Not fucking sorry. Just sorry. Fucking fuck. I’m sorry I got Rose killed.”</p>
<p>“What?” Dave asks. You turn and find him staring at you quizzically. “What do you mean you got Rose killed?”</p>
<p>“I should have been able to stop Gamzee, obviously, dipfuck,” you say. “I was supposed to be his moirail. My job is supposed to be keeping him from murdering people.”</p>
<p>“Uh, dude, you hadn’t even fucking talked to Gamzee in like the whole two years we’ve had on this rock. You were hardly his friend anymore, let alone his goddamn monorail.”</p>
<p>“Moirail!” you correct, your blood boiling. “Moirail! Not monorail! That’s not a word! 'Monorail' is literally not a fucking word! It doesn’t mean anything!”</p>
<p>“Uh, yeah, it does. Y’all didn’t have monorails?” Dave asks. The incredulousness on his face is probably the most noticeable emotion you’ve seen on him in the last sweep. “You were a spacefaring murder-empire of warrior aliens with rainbow blood racism and you hadn’t figured monorails out? Excuse me?”</p>
<p>“Oh, don’t act so high and mighty that your inferior society had something we didn’t. What was a monorail? Some sort of nuclear weapon? A source of infinite food and energy? Whatever it was, I can fucking assure we had a version of it that was better in every conceivable way,” you insist.</p>
<p>“Okay, so, okay. So, a monorail,” Dave starts. His hands join the conversation, beginning to gesture in inane rocking motions - up and down, side to side, fist to open palm - and his fingers twist and bend in midair, constructing an image you can't see. "It's sort of like a train, but it's like, high up. It's all sci-fi and shit and you'll be standing on the ground and the whole, like, pole railway is sticking out of the ground and the monorail just whirrs past above you-"</p>
<p>"How are you supposed to board a ridiculous contraption like that if it’s floating above the ground?" you ask, leaning forward almost instinctively. His hands stop moving and fall to his legs, and when he looks down at you, you pretend you weren't staring at them.</p>
<p>"Well, there's like, platforms, obviously, come on," Dave says.</p>
<p>"That's so fucking stupid," you growl. "Just use a damn scuttlebuggy like a normal fucking person."</p>
<p>"How old did you have to be to drive on Alternia?" Dave asks.</p>
<p>"Six," you respond.</p>
<p>"Wow, that's like thirteen in normal years, right? Shit, dude, that's pretty fucking early," Dave says.</p>
<p>"Well, how the hell else were we meant to get around?" you counter. "Not everyone had a lusus large enough to be ridden."</p>
<p>"I don't know, like, public transport?" Dave asks, but then he seems to realize a fault in his own argument. "No, wait. You'd need an adult to drive the bus or whatever."</p>
<p>You scoff. "Just shut up."</p>
<p>"I'm just thinking about all the casualties," he continues nonetheless. "Cars are pretty fuckin' dangerous. On Earth, they got people killed all the time, and we didn't let kids drive."</p>
<p>"Well, maybe you just needed to get better at driving, collectively, as a species. You ever think about that, asshole?" you ask. Dave shrugs.</p>
<p>"I mean, if you're any indication, I doubt it."</p>
<p>"What's that meant to mean?" you snap.</p>
<p>"Not you, specifically. Your whole squad, I mean. Like, you guys don’t seem like you’d have been super good at driving, either,” he says.</p>
<p>“Bullshit,” you respond. “I would excel at driving. I would drive circles around you and then ram into your dumb human ass and watch you tumble to the ground.”</p>
<p>“On Earth, running into people generally wasn’t a sign of being a good driver,” Dave says with a smug smile growing on his face. You snarl.</p>
<p>“It is, if I do it on purpose and it’s magnificent!”</p>
<p>“Uh huh, uh huh,” Dave says. “And you’re going to prove to me that you’re good at driving by running me over?”</p>
<p>“Shut up! Just shut up!” you snap. Dave starts laughing brightly with hiccup-like sounds between breaths. His head is turned away so that you can just see his eyes scrunched closed behind his shades. You haven’t often seen him laugh before.</p>
<p>He sighs and leans back into the throw pillows. “You know, out of everyone on this meteor to be stuck with, I used to think that you were one of the worst.”</p>
<p>“Gee, thanks,” you say. “You’ll be glad to know that the feeling is mutual.”</p>
<p>“No, see, I don’t feel like that anymore, I don’t think,” he explains. “Or maybe I’m just a masochist and love being yelled at.”</p>
<p>“Maybe I’m a masochist who loves the company of insufferable pricks,” you say before you realize the words have exited your mouth. He tilts his head to look at you. His mouth is cracked open with a kind of awed surprise. You feel the same way. You drop your head back onto the backrest and level it with his. “Well, yeah. You’re not so bad, either.”</p>
<p>Dave smiles. “You’re the nicest douchebag I’ve ever met. Even if you are really dumb sometimes.”</p>
<p>“I feel the exact same way about you,” you respond.</p>
<p>You settle into silence for a little while, each turning to look up at the sky. Dave moves his turntables off his lap and onto the couch beside him. Your hands fiddle with the material of the couch. The colorful bubbles crawl past you.</p>
<p>“You ever wonder what it’s like up there?” you ask, eventually.</p>
<p>“In the bubbles?” Dave asks. You hum.</p>
<p>“Everyone else died properly,” you say. “We’re just stuck here, waiting for the timeline to collapse. It’s like… inevitable oblivion is coming and we can’t stop it, while they get to keep existing indefinitely.”</p>
<p>“I mean,” Dave sighs. “That was sort of what was about to happen to me and Rose and John and Jade, back in our session, wasn’t it? Like, the Scratch, I mean. Just… disappearing. It feels like… y’know, we escaped that, but that was just delaying the inevitable, I guess. Someone had to fuck up that clown’s shit. If that had to be me, and I had to be the one to stay behind so everyone else could keep going, I think… it was worth it.”</p>
<p>You turn to look at him. His eyebrows are low and sad. His arms are crossed over his chest in a strange self-hug. You let yourself lean a little closer. “Hey.”</p>
<p>He looks at you. You open your mouth and close it again, trying to find the words. Everything you come up with feels stupid, dull and unhelpful.</p>
<p>“I,” you say. “...Thanks for saving me, even if it means I have to disappear forever too.”</p>
<p>You feel the pressure of tears building up in your eyes. Dave looks away, blinking rapidly. “It’s whatever.”</p>
<p>There’s silence for a few moments.</p>
<p>He says, “thanks for keeping me company.”</p>
<p>And then there’s silence again. You stare at the bubbles. Just before the moment passes, Dave shifts and you feel his hand brush against yours. It settles there, a warm anchor in the void. You tense instinctively. He doesn’t move further than that. After a few seconds, you grasp his hand. You feel the callouses on his palm and the shapes of tiny scars on his knuckles.</p>
<p>The contact spreads heat through your arm and into every atom of your body.</p>
<p>You watch bubbles pass by for a period of time that may be a minute or an hour or an eternity. Some are dangerously close. You see them clip through the meteor beside you, close enough to touch, but not close enough to draw you in. Others are so far away that you can barely tell what color they are.</p>
<p>“Karkat,” Dave says softly. His voice is trembling anxiously. You shift your hand ever so slightly, and you feel his pulse beating rapidly in his wrist. He swallows and says, “before we die. Don’t tell anyone, but… I think I actually am a little bit gay. Just a little.”</p>
<p>He’s looking at you, eyebrows furrowed. You meet his gaze as best you can. You can feel your own breath speeding up. “I think… I am, too.”</p>
<p>Dave suppresses a smile. “I know.”</p>
<p>“Are you…?” you ask, but the words fizzle out before you have the time to figure out how to finish the sentence. Dave looks nervous. He squeezes your hand. It makes a shiver run down your spine. He lifts his head a little, but keeps his gaze locked on your face.</p>
<p>“Before the girls died,” he says. His hand is shaking just a little bit, and you feel it starting to get clammy and sweaty. “In the common room, I’d always stare at you, and I didn’t know why. I just couldn’t, y’know, stop myself. But now I think I know why.”</p>
<p>“I- you,” you get out shakily. Your skin is blazing. You scoot a little bit closer, just enough for him to notice. You don’t have a name for the heated trembling you feel. “I don’t- I mean, I… Are we meant to hate or pity each other?”</p>
<p>“I don’t think I hate or pity you,” Dave admits. He searches for words for a long moment. Your heart is pounding in your chest. “I think- well, I mean, it's kind of a big commitment to say it… out loud, but, I think I… you know…? You know what I mean?”</p>
<p>Slowly, slowly, you nod. He pauses. Even slower, you reach up to his head with your free hand and pick his shades off of it. His eyes are a bright ruby red. You always hated that color, but now that it’s in his eyes, it looks different, somehow. You feel like a rubber band pulled to maximum tension. He searches your eyes for something, and you hope that he finds it.</p>
<p>“Can we…?” you ask, trailing off again.</p>
<p>“Yeah, uh, like,” he says. You feel his breath on your face. “I mean, if you mean what I think.”</p>
<p>“Kiss,” you say.</p>
<p>He hesitates, open-mouthed, just long enough for you to be afraid you messed up. But then he says, “yeah. Yes.”</p>
<p>You don’t know who moves in first, and frankly, you don’t care.</p>
<p>The turntables end up on the ground. You never thought that cuddling on a couch would be the ideal romance of your lifetime. Somehow it is, and it’s… surprisingly good. Dave smells vaguely of human sweat and his arm is heavy on your waist. Every part of him is warm and soft. Kissing is nice.</p>
<p>Later, you’re half-asleep, face pressed into the crook of his neck. The void of Paradox Space feels far away, even though it’s hanging just above you.</p>
<p>One of Dave’s hands is in your hair, pulling out the tangles and twirling strands around. He huffs in half-laughter. “We really did wait until the edge of actual, literal oblivion to do this, didn’t we?”</p>
<p>You poke his cheek with a claw. “Your fault.”</p>
<p>“How is it my fault?” he protests, smiling.</p>
<p>“Because it’s not mine,” you respond. “You little bastard.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, sure, dude,” Dave says. “Keep telling yourself that. You know you were just as much of a wuss as me.”</p>
<p>“I’m not a wuss,” you say, frowning.</p>
<p>“We’re both wusses,” Dave says. You lift your head to meet his eyes again. He looks at you with a lazy smile and half-lidded eyes. “Better late than never.”</p>
<p>He stops for a second to stare at you. The look on his face is the kind of look you know you haven’t earned.</p>
<p>“So much better,” he finishes.</p>
<p>You try to give him a smile back, but you get self-conscious about your teeth and look away. Dave’s hand cradles your jaw and he leans up to kiss you. You kiss him back. You dread the notion of sleep more than ever. Maybe the timeline won’t collapse. You’ll wake up in two hours, and you’ll laugh at yourselves and at the world. </p>
<p>But maybe you’ll vanish. Maybe this is the last moment you’ll ever get to have.</p>
<p>“Whatever happens in the long run,” you say against his lips. “Wherever we end up, I hope that a version of us that survives gets to have this, too.”</p>
<p>“I hope so,” Dave says, and his voice shakes. “I hope so, too.”</p>
<p>You feel warm tears on your cheeks, racing down to your jaw and dripping into his god tier shirt. You are so, so tired. Dave pulls you down and holds you close to him and kisses you one more time. You clutch his shirt and try to will out those words, but they won’t come.</p>
<p>“Good night, Karkat,” Dave says very, very quietly. His voice is wet and tear-logged.</p>
<p>“Good night, Dave,” you respond softly, because it’s the best you can do. Your tears seep into his shirt and it masks their redness. You’re cradled tight between his body and his arms, like he doesn’t want to let you go. You try to hold him just as tight. If there’s any memory, any part of you that survives this, let it be this part. Let it be the part that holds on to him. </p>
<p>Dave’s breathing goes shallow. You close your eyes and let yourself nod off.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
<p></p><div>
  <p>
    <i>And I will try, try, try to breathe</i>
    <br/>
    <i>'Til it turns to muscle memory</i>
    <br/>
    <i>I'm only steady on my knees,</i>
    <br/>
    <i>One day i'll stand on my own two feet</i>
  </p>
</div></blockquote></div></div>
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